The schematical anthropomorphous stele from the Taman’ peninsula

In 2016 during excavation of archaeological sites in the area of access roadsto the Kerch Bridge, kurgan 2 of the burial ground known as Vyshesteblievskiy XXI wasexcavated. The kurgan was constructed in stages at various periods of the Bronze Age andcontained 12 burials. Burial No. 5, which is the earliest primary burial of the first mound,is attributed to the Yamnaya cultural and historical community of the Early Bronze Age.It was a cenotaph or, probably, a child’s burial the skeleton of which did not survive.A small rectangular pit was roofed with slabs made from shell limestone and a layerof common eelgrass. One of the slabs looked like a schematic anthropomorphous stelewith the so called cup-shaped hollows on both planes. There is no clear analogy to thistype of the funerary rite in the adjacent areas of the Kuban’ River Region and the entireWest Caucasus. However, roofs made from slabs and stelae, including stelae withcup-shaped hollows, are found in Yamnaya burials of the Crimea and southern areasof Ukraine. Apparently, these contacts is one of the factors, which determined distinctive